In 2005 the Arts and Humanities Research Council initiated a review of practice-led research in art, design and architecture. The purpose of the review was to develop a ‘comprehensive map of recent and current research activity in the area’. What quickly became obvious to the team that won the bid to run the review (led by the three authors) was that to map activity one first had to attempt to define it. The term ‘practice-led research’ means many different things to different people and so immediately raises debate. The positions range from those who believe that the act of making or designing alone constitutes research, to those who believe that research (as analytical activity) is incommensurable with design (as synthetic activity). For the former, the knowledge contained within the artefact is self-evident and beyond the need for additional explication; for the latter, knowledge resides outside the artefact and in the realm of its dissemination and interpretation. The importance of the AHRC review is not that it will settle these arguments, but that it will provide a much firmer context in which to place them.

Three projects by Lynch Architects illustrate the author's argument that the villa type enables contemplation to become an ethos, and the reconciliation of action and poetry.

Analysis of the detailed design of a primary school classroom suggests that intelligent sustainable design can be both environmentally beneficial and cost effective.

Following the lead of Buckminster Fuller’s experiments with the prefabricated, mechanical core, Archigram like the Smithsons, extended the service model to the domestic programme.

Mediating between forest and garden, tradition and modernity, a small wooden gate at Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea is shown to be deeply rooted in Finnish cultural memories.

Flexibility in housing design has social, economic and environmental advantages and yet is currently often ignored. The first of two papers sets out the history of this issue.